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Drag
Human male, born LY 845, in Sorret. Grand Sorreter and bishop of Sorret, 890-903. Second Protestant Arch-bishop (903). Drag was apprenticed to Coman in 860, at the age of 15, and soon became his top student. By the age of 20, he easily could have graduated to adept status, but preferred to continue learning as much as he could from his master. (It should be noted that in 865, Durell became apprenticed to Coman, and soon developed a sense of rivalry with Drag, though Drag himself did not share this sense of rivalry with Durell.) Finally, in 869, Drag became an adept, though this was merely a token title; he easily could have been considered a master-adept at that point, and did in fact assume that title just one year later, in 870. At the same time, he accepted a position on the Council of Magicks. (It would be another eight years before Durell became an adept, and seventeen years before he joined the Council.) In 889, Coman died, and in 890, Drag succeeded him as Grand Sorreter and bishop of Sorret. In 898, during the Pilgrimage to Monab, The Plan, or parts of it, were revealed to all the delegations of The Order from other villages, including Sorret. Drag was openly opposed to the idea of the Plan, but at the time took no action against it. (Durell was intrigued by the Plan, and Drag's dislike of it heightened his appreciation for it.) In 902, Drag and many of his allies joined the newly founded Protestant Movement in actively opposing the Plan. In early 903, the Protestants began raising armies and navies to oppose the Coming of the Order, when they realized it would be impossible to put a stop to the Plan without resorting to war. Meanwhile, Drag attempted to contact the elves in the hopes they might lend their assistance against the forces of the Order. For a reason which was unknown at the time, his efforts to locate them were blocked, but on 31 Su'yet, (over two months after the war started, and about five months after Drag had given up on finding them), a group of elves attacked the Protestant forces in what came to be called the Battle of Elves' Ambush. It was then that Drag learned Durell had contacted them two years earlier, and they were joining the war on the side of the Order. However, before that, and in fact before the war even started, Drag had contacted the merfolk, who agreed to lend their aid, and began forming the Marine Corps, which would be of assistance to the Protestants in a few battles, including the very first battle of the war, the Battle of Shipsister. In spite of a few victories, the Protestants were ultimately no match for the forces of the Order. One of their greatest defeats was in the Battle of Plist, where Therman, the founder of the Protestant Movement, was killed. After his death, Drag became the second Protestant Arch-bishop. But this position was short-lived, as later that year, toward the end of the Battle of Triscot, Drag and his allies vanished without a trace. To this day it is not known where they disappeared to, though within a few years of their disappearance, Drag began sending spies to keep an eye on developments in the Second Order, and to report back to him. In 912, the Protestant ex-Sorreters offered their assistance to The Chaos, and more of them began thereafter returning to the world, this time openly rather than covertly. Many helped in the establishment of the United Villages of the Chaos, though Drag and many of his allies chose to remain wherever it was they'd been since the war, separate from any government. The spell Drag used as a qualifier for becoming Grand Sorreter was one he had actually developed in 879, a decade before the position became available (though surely he could have used a number of other spells as potential qualifiers). It was called universal translation. He actually developed this spell with the help of an I-dragon friend of his, named Santos. Santos himself had spent some time studying non-intelligent dragons, with the understanding that while they had no speech, they did have thoughts, as do essentially all animals, even if the thoughts they have are far less complex than those of sentient beings, even those considered semi-intelligent. It's only natural that an I-dragon would be uniquely qualified to bridge the gap between human thought and that of strictly animalistic dragons. In discussing the matter with Drag one day, the conversation came around to the fact that the three species considered fully sentient, humans, elves, and merfolk, all possess the capacity for learning new subwords automatically, without the need to be taught these words in the usual manner of learning. This ability also exists to a lesser extent in semi-intelligent creatures, and Santos had utilized it in helping him figure out what the various vocalizations of dragons meant. It occurred to Drag that, although the subword sense tends not to work instantaneously, particularly when dealing with a large number of unfamiliar words all at once, it might be incorporated into a spell to enhance the speed of the sense, and also be made to work on vocalizations that aren't sufficiently complex to constitute a true language. Drag and Santos worked out such a spell together, and once it was perfected, it served to help them understand the simple thoughts being expressed by the vocalizations of various species. Of course, the spell had little practical application, as non-intelligent animals seemed to have nothing important to say, and were not capable of responding intelligibly to anything said to them, even when the speaker used the spell (which in theory works two ways, but in practice only one, when the listener doesn't consciously understand the concept of speech). However, years later, during the Coming of the Order, Drag used the spell to create encoding for t-mail, which until then had been unencoded, and therefore open to hacking, even if prior to the war it had most likely never occurred to anyone to attempt magically eavesdropping on t-mail conversations. This use of Drag's spell became very helpful to the early efforts of the Protestants, though it was later learned by Durell's Sorreters, and utilized by those fighting on the side of the Order. After the war, encoded t-mail bubbles became available to the general public, while more strongly encoded bubbles were developed separately by Sorreters working for both the government and for gangs. It should also be noted that the earlier version of the spell, without the use of t-mail, was also used by Protestants in obtaining a certain degree of help from unicorns (semi-intelligent mythical creatures without the capacity for speech) in a few battles of the war. (The existence of this spell may also play a role in starting rumors that Protestant Sorreters had secretly learned advanced telepathy.) Apprentices This is a far from complete list of apprentices Drag has had over the years. *Noson (app. 878-883) *Lorraine Piper (app. 898-902) See also *List of Arch-bishops *List of Grand Sorreters Category:People